Given the huge popularity of the SEOPressor plugin, I thought I’d do a comparison with some recent competitors.
The basic premise of an on-page SEO plugin is that it gives you suggestions for improving on-page SEO and an overall score.
In theory, if the score that is reported by the on-page SEO plugin is high, then you should have a highly optimized page.
The six on-page SEO plugins I’m comparing are:
1. SEOPressor – This is the most well known on-page SEO plugin. It was developed by Daniel Tan and has been on the market for some time.
2. BloggerHigh SEO – This is a free clone of the SEOPressor plugin.
3. ClickBump SEO – This is a recent entrant into the on-page SEO plugin space. It is developed by Scott Blanchard.
4. WP SEO Beast – This on-page SEO plugin arrived on the screen just after ClickBump SEO. It is developed by Prashant Sharma.
5. Easy WP SEO – This is the highly popular on-page SEO Plugin that is developed by Chris Landrum.
6. Measure My SEO – This is the newest on-page SEO Plugin on the market and is developed by Jason Fladlien and Wilson Mattos.
Demonstration of the On-Page SEO Plugins
The following video gives a brief overview of what each of the plugins do and how they compare to each other.
Please note that when I recorded the original video, WP SEO Beast wasn’t available, so the WP SEO Beast review is in the video below:
The video below shows a quick overview of the Easy WP SEO plugin
Note that in the Easy WP SEO video above, this was using Easy WP SEO version 1.5. Since then Easy WP SEO v1.6 was released and has a number of major improvements, including:
- Copyscape checking
- Export/Import of Easy WP SEO settings
- Ability to check membership/protected pages
- Ability to check any URL on your site, eg: archives, categories etc
- Ability to fine tune what SEO checks are used in the ratings
- Better SEO report option.
Looking at the Plugins In More Detail
SEOPressor
I was a reluctant purchaser of SEOPressor as I really didn’t think $97 was particularly good value for what it does (particularly if you already know the elements of on-page SEO). However, given I review products, I ended up buying a copy as at the very least, it’s a useful reminder for particular on-page SEO elements I might have forgotten.
Good Points
- Has a central administration menu for defining keywords and viewing page/post scores and descriptions.
- Works with auto-blogs by giving it a list of keywords and SEOPressor will automatically “decorate” the keywords, ie: bold, underline, italics.
Bad Points
- Price! In my opinion, $97 for a plugin like this is way over priced. I think somewhere between $30-$50 is much more reasonable and realistic.
- Nags you about not having an H1 tag, when the vast majority of WordPress themes automatically use H1 for the post/page titles. Of course you can ignore the suggestion, but it’s something that really irks me.
Click here to access the SEOPressor website
BloggerHigh SEO
BloggerHigh SEO is essentially a rewritten version of SEOPressor.
The actual author and origins of BloggerHigh SEO is a little mysterious. It appears to be a product of the “Masked Guru”. Whatever the origins, the big plus of BloggerHigh SEO is that it is free and rebrandable.
Good Points
- Can’t argue with the price as it’s free!
- The plugin is rebrandable, so you can rebrand it yourself (with some limitations) and give it away or sell it.
- Pretty much does the same things as SEOPressor.
Bad Points
- No central administration page. You need to go to each individual page/post to check the score and suggestions.
- If you don’t have the “hide attribution” option checked, then you’ll have an ugly footer added to each of your pages that have links to the various BloggerHigh sites. Although, to be fair, as it is a free product, you can’t really blame them for wanting backlinks to their sites.
Click here to access the BloggerHigh SEO website
Clickbump SEO
I recently bumped (bad pun) into Clickbump SEO on the Warrior Forum. The plugin itself is not currently promoted so much as a standalone plugin, but usually offered as part of the Clickbump Engine Bundle.
Scott did mention that he had registered a domain for Clickbump SEO, so it will be offered as a standalone product very soon.
As I wasn’t that interested in the Clickbump Engine, I purchased just the Clickbump SEO plugin.
Good Points
- It’s less than half the price of SEOPressor.
- Is aware of WordPress themes that use H1, H2 and H3 tags for headings.
- Doesn’t have any overheads of processing a page to add auto-decoration.
- Has a LSI function to grab related keywords. Very handy reminder of what keywords/phrases to sprinkle into your article.
- Customisable keyword density settings.
- Keyword/Score summary from the Posts/Page manager.
Bad Points
- Can’t really think of any.
Click here to access the ClickBump SEO website
WP SEO Beast
I bought the WP SEO Beast plugin when it was first released so that I could add it to the list of other plugins to compare it to.
I found a few issues with version 1.0 of the WP SEO Beast plugin, so I contacted the author (who was very prompt with his responses) and waited until version 2.0 was released. This is the version I’m basing my review/comparison on.
Prashant Sharma has obviously studied the other on-page SEO plugins that are available as WP SEO Beast seems to borrow a few ideas from all of them.
WP SEO Beast is probably best described as a cross between ClickBump SEO and SEOPressor. It does however, have a SEO settings option (similar to all-in-one SEO) which none of the other plugins don’t have. This has good and bad points as I’ll detail below.
Good Points
- Costs $37, for a plugin that offers more than SEOPressor at more than twice the price.
- Has an option to generate LSI keywords.
- Is aware of WordPress themes that use H1 tags for the post/page title.
- Has summary pages for post and page scores.
- Has support for mobile devices.
- Has inbuilt SEO options to set the meta Title, Description and Keywords so no additional SEO plugins are needed, eg: all-in-one SEO. Note that I’ve also listed this feature in the bad points
Bad Points
- Probably my biggest gripe with WP SEO Beast is that it forces you to use it’s SEO settings for title, description and keywords. This means you have no choice to use another SEO plugin like all-in-one SEO or Platinum SEO. If you do have one of these plugins active, you will end up with two sets of clashing SEO meta data.
- Your score is marked down if you don’t use SEO Beast title, description and keywords, but more importantly, your score is marked down if you don’t use the auto-decoration options (bold, italics, underline). That means if you manually decorate your keyword, WP SEO Beast doesn’t recognise it.
I think it is only fair to point out that Prashant Sharma is extremely keen to take on board any suggestions to improve the plugin (unfortunately he didn’t address my gripe with the plugin recognising manually decorated keywords though), so you may well find the issues I’ve brought up have been dealt with.
Click here to access the WP SEO Beast website
Easy WP SEO
Easy WP SEO was the latest of the on-page seo plugins that I had a look at.
My first impressions were very favourable as Easy WP SEO has a very professional and polished look and feel. This certainly extends through to the very extensive documentation that is available with the plugin. There are instructional videos for every single function of Easy WP SEO.
One big feature that only Easy WP SEO has, is the ability to specify multiple keywords. This is really useful as most of the time, you want to optimize for your main keyword plus a selection of secondary keywords. With Easy WP SEO, you can easily select which keyword you want to see the analysis for.
Good Points
- Very clean and professional design.
- Ability to handle multiple keywords.
- Has an LSI function, where you can list LSI keywords and drag/drop them into your article.
- Able to fine tune a large number of settings, eg: keyword density, minimum number of words, title length etc.
- Only on-page seo plugin to include a readability index.
- Has a Copyscape check function.
- Extensive documentation including a manual and video guides.
Bad Points
- Can’t think of any.
Easy WP SEO is not currently available to the public via the main website, however you can grab a discounted copy below.
Click here to access the discounted copy of Easy WP SEO
Measure My SEO 
I recently came across the Measure My SEO plugin, but haven’t had time to personally review it. I’m including it here for completeness.
Note that I’m basing my information about the Measure My SEO plugin from the Measure My SEO website.
At first glance, Measure My SEO looks like a much more pretty version of SEOPressor or BloggerHigh. The core functionality doesn’t appear to be much different, but there are a few key differences that make it stand out.
Good Points
- The settings page allows you to control exactly what SEO features you want to measure.
- Has a live checker that automatically updates the SEO page score without you having to update the page.
Bad Points
- Not as fully featured as WP SEO Beast, Clickbump SEO and Easy WP SEO.
Click here to access the Measure My SEO website.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is an important part of on-page SEO, but you should be aware that there are a few different ways to calculate it and you will get different results depending on what tool you are using.
There are two main ways to calculate keyword phrase density.
A=Total occurrences of the keyword phrase in the article
B=Total number of words in the article
C=Number of words in the keyword phrase
Keyword density calculation 1 uses:
(A / B) * 100
Keyword density calculation 2, uses:
(A * C / B) * 100
Let’s have a look at an example and the difference in the keyword density score those two formulas can make.
Let’s say we have a article with 1000 words and using keyword phrase of “search engine results page” (4 words) where there are 10 occurrences of that phrase.
So using the first formula, that gives us:
(10 / 1000) * 100 = 1% keyword density
and using the second formula, gives us:
(10 * 4 / 1000) * 100 = 4% keyword density
That’s quite a difference depending on which formula you use. (Note: the differences only apply to keyword phrases and not when you use a single keyword).
All the on-page SEO plugins I tested use the first formula apart from BloggerHigh SEO.
With Easy WP SEO you have the option which keyword density calculation to use, where the default is the first formula.
There is a good explanation of keyword density calculations on Wikipedia.
So Which is the Best Plugin To Use?
My recommendation is if you already have SEOpressor and are relatively happy with using it, then there’s probably not a compelling reason to throw it out in favour of BloggerHigh SEO, ClickBump SEO, WP SEO Beast, Measure My SEO or Easy WP SEO.
If you are on a tight budget, then BloggerHigh SEO is a good option.
Of the other four plugins, my pick would be for Easy WP SEO. With the version 1.6 update, Easy WP SEO is now well ahead of the pack.
Of the other on-page SEO plugins, my next pick would be ClickBump SEO, followed by WP SEO Beast or Measure My SEO.
Hopefully all these on-page SEO plugins will be further developed and I’ll update this review page if there are any major changes.
If you come across any other similar on-page SEO plugins, let me know and I’ll add them to this review.
Cheers
Thanks for the review Peter, very helpful indeed.
I did recently come across ScribeSEO.com
Seems to do similar on-page things but then adds linkbuilding to the mix as well.
Pricing REALLY sucks because it’s a monthly fee but would love to get your impressions of it.
Best,
Paul
Hi Paul.
Thanks for the heads up on ScribeSEO as I hadn’t come across it before.
I agree that the pricing seems incredibly expensive for what it does, but I’ll get a trial copy so I can properly evaluate it.
Cheers
Peter
In the meantime another plugin called WP SEO Beast has appeared. I have purchased a copy of this and will add it to the on-page SEO plugins review shortly.
Hi Peter,great information on the various SEO plugins. I wish I had seen your review earlier to save me some money on SEOpresser. Had no idea there were so many similar plugins for half the price and free. Looking forward to your review on SEO Beast.
Hi Henry.
Know what you mean. I bought SEOPressor before the other alternatives were available (mind you, I still like to review all of them).
With SEO Beast, I’m just waiting for an update to fix some minor bugs before I review it.
Cheers
Peter
Hey there,
Thanks for the review.
1. We have added the LSI feature.
2. Please also mention about the mobile compatibility which in on no other plugin. Our plugin does not try and adapt the theme to suit smartphones but it has a different theme for the smartphones which makes it extremely easy to use on smartphones. I am sure you know the huge market that is there for smartphones.
3. The SEO BEAST Title, Description and Tags are optional, I have put in the option because most people forget putting in the title, desc, tags manually. This has no effect on the score of your post.
4. You can continue using your favorite programs with the SEO BEAST like: all-in-one SEO without any problems. Just use all-in-one SEO instead of the title,tags,description of the SEO BEAST.
5. Only the first 4 instances of the keyword are decorated automatically. If you choose to do it manually you can change the settings at the configuration page.
I am hoping you could make the changes to the review and add a few points that I’ve mentioned.
Thanks
WP SEO BEAST TEAM
Hi Prashant.
Thank you for your responses.
I really appreciate your feedback.
1. I already mentioned the LSI feature in the review.
2. Good point, I’ll add that to the good points.
3. Not so. I had a post rated at 6.8 with no SEO Beast title, description, keywords. Once I’d added those details, the score went up to 8.4
4. Not true. Using any other SEO plugin like all-in-one SEO causes duplicate meta tags. There should only be one title, description and keywords tags.
5. The point I was making is that if you manually decorate the keywords, the plugin does not recognise this fact and lowers the overall SEO score.
I’m sure that you’ll continue to improve your plugin and make it a leader in the field of on-page SEO plugins 🙂
Cheers
Peter
How thorough was that..I never really thought about putting those widgets to my blog.. I thought if I could just put some Keywords and Description it’ll be A OK..thanks for sharing these…
Hi Peter, I also bought the SEOPressor. OOPs Now I have two H1 tags as I did not know that WP Titles are H1 tags and since Seopressor insisted that I am missing them, I included them in my posts.
Perhaps this is a naive question, but should I now remove them??
I have another complaint about SEOpressor and that is, that it keeps telling me that I do not have my keywords in the last sentence. Does not matter what I do, it just does not acknowledge the fact.
I hope Prashart will improve his plugin, I would definitely replace Seopressor.
Thank you for the comparison.
Hi Dita.
I think there are a lot of SEOPressor sites that would have duplicate H1 tags in their articles.
What you need to do is edit the post (or page) and with the WordPress editor, change whatever heading you have set to “Heading1” to “Heading2”.
I’ve also noticed that SEOPressor doesn’t always detect the keyword in the last sentence. It will report it as missing if you have an image after the last sentence and I think it sometimes also misses it if there are blank lines at the end of the article.
At this stage, I’d recommend waiting for a few more days as I’ll be also including a review of “Easy WP SEO”, which will be available very soon. I’ve been using the early copies of it, and so far it’s the leader of all the other on-page SEO plugins I’ve reviewed.
Cheers
Peter
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your response and the tip on how to change the H1 headings.
I look forward to your review of the Easy WP SEO. Hope it will be released really soon.
Regards,
Dita
Hi Dita.
Chris Landrum was due to release an update to Easy WP SEO and open it to the general public a couple of weeks ago, but there were some delays.
I believe it should be available in the next week (certainly hope so).
Cheers
Peter
While I am not really a blogger, it seems that WordPress is a very popular website that bloggers these days seem to flock to. Why is this? Is it just because of the vast amount of plugins, or is there something else I am missing?
This is not the first time I have stumbled upon some of these SEO plugins in a review setting, though I do think your writing really enlightens the reader more than many other websites do. The amount of details provided are many, and the comparison between the various plugins are great; and really allow people to make their own decisions!
In response to Chris, I personally like WP because of its user-friendliness and the various plugins are just amazing, I like seopressor, but it does not work on thai language 🙁 Is there something I can do about this?
I’m not entirely sure of non-English language support in the plugins I’ve reviewed. Probably best to contact the creators to check.
what is the best onpage seo for autoblog ??
All the on-page seo plugins I reviewed are suitable for auto-blogs.
i heard that easy wp seo is the best..but still my best choice goes to Bloggerhigh seo..can beat free price..lol..why you have to pay if you can get same plugin with same function..just my 2cent
BloggerHigh SEO is certainly a good price in that it is free, but it lacks a lot of functionality that the other plugins like Easy WP SEO have.
hola peter yo tengo el “clickbump” y “easy wp seo”, el “easy wp seo” no lo entiendo por la densidad de palabras clave no e logrado configuarlo bien, es mejor el clickbump?
Hi Enrique.
I don’t speak Spanish, so I’ve had to run your comment through Google translate.
Easy WP SEO tiene dos opciones para la configuración de densidad de palabras clave. Elija la que se adapte a sus necesidades.
Peter
thanks peter, I have a 307 word article on “easy wp seo” tells me I have a keyword density of 4.85% and “clickbump” says I have 1.6%. Which one is correct?
I’m surprised you are getting different keyword density scores between Clickbump SEO and Easy WP SEO as in my testing they were the same.
In Easy WP SEO, under Easy WP SEO -> Settings->Miscellaneous Settings
You can set the keyword density formula. By default it is set to:
(Total Keywords / Total Words) * 100
but you also have the option to set it to:
(Total Keywords / (Total Words / Total Words In Keyword Phrase)) * 100
Make sure you read through the section at the bottom of my article which explains about keyword density calculations.
thank you very much I wish you successes peter
This is a very nice comparison. Thank you peter:).It helped me.
Good article – been struggling to decide which of these plugins to go for. Trying out BloggerHigh as it is free and also trying their autobacklink plugin as well. Easy WP SEO does seem the best value and most complete choice. Will have to give it a go after my experiments with the free one’s.
Thanks for the comparison Peter!
Thanks for your feedback Nick. Glad you found the review useful to you.
Cheers
Peter
Good article but how you don’t have SLOWS DOWN SERVER TO A CRAWL as the major negative of SEOPressor is beyond me.. I pulled that thing off of several sites after it took them to their knees. Many have posted about this, Google it…
Hi Sean.
That’s a very good point and certainly something I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about on forums.
I think the main things that slow SEOPressor down are when you have auto-decorate switched on and are using it on auto-blogs.
Cheers
Peter
Why did you not review or mention Yoast or All-in-1?
Hi Angela.
The all-in-one-seo plugin doesn’t perform the same function as the other on-page SEO plugins. It doesn’t give you on-page SEO hints.
On the other hand, Yoast sort of sits in the middle in that it performs the function that all-in-one-seo does, plus some basic on-page SEO suggestions.
Cheers
Peter
Couple of points – the only plugin you mention that uses the correct keyword density calculation is Bloggerhigh. If the keyphrase is exactly one word long, the two calculations produce the same result. If it’s more than 1 word long, the single word calc understates the density to the point where Google will ban you in a flash. There’s a good page about keyphrase density on wikipedia if you’re interested in why this is so. It’s the reason most ‘seopressor’ blogs blow up fast. the second reason is that Tan’s plugin, unlike the bloggerhigh version which runs locally, calls his server to do the work on EACH AND EVERY PAGE, so no wonder seopressor is slow. Now you know!
Hi Mark.
Thanks for your comments.
Note that Easy WP SEO has an option for which keyword density calculation you prefer to use.
How have you determined that SEOPressor contacts Daniel Tan’s server for processing. I’ve certainly seen no evidence of this.
Also note that an updated version of SEOPressor was released a few weeks back that is supposed to fix the slowness issue. I haven’t had a chance to test the updated version, so I can’t verify how well it works.
Cheers
Peter
Hi, Kevin Stacey here..
First off, this post is extremely thorough! I don’t see too many bloggers going into detail like you have…that’s the mark of a blogger who knows their SEO plugin. For optimization, free plugins like All in One SEO Pack are really great as it lays down the basic SEO foundation for a WordPress site, but every blog is different and nothing works best for everyone.
I always suggest looking at a side-by-side comparison of the best seo plugins for WordPress in order to make an informed decision of what the best plugin is for that blogger and their website’s specific needs.
Here’s my most recent write-up on the subject:
SEO Pressor vs Easy WP SEO vs Scribe SEO
http://www.bestseopluginforwordpress.com/wordpress-seo/the-best-seo-plugin-for-wordpress/
Check it out and let me know what you think.
Great article btw…I’ll be referencing this post on my main blog.
Thanks Peter, I was thinking of buying Seopressor, but I am going to check out Blogger High. I appreciate your very detailed review of all 6 seo plugins.
Hi John.
Glad you found the review useful.
Cheers
Peter
How does Jeff Johnson’s SEO plugin compare to Eazy WP SEO??
Hi Nick.
If you are referring to Jeff Johnson’s “Free Traffic Getting SEO Plugin”, then it is quite different to Easy WP SEO.
As I understand it, Jeff Johnson’s plugin is essentially a plugin that bundles various popular plugins along with their configuration. It isn’t specifically for SEO, but the plugins that it includes can help with SEO.
Cheers
Peter
Hi Peter,
First of all fantastic Website exactly as a website should be,lots of useful info etc.
I think i will have to model mine on this one if you do not mind ?
What theme are you using if that is not a cheeky question ? ha ha
I have been looking at your reviews on plugins and i came across this one which i have pasted the link in below i would like your thoughts on this if possible,
Kind Regards,
Dennis.
http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-special-offers-forum/551309-1-click-wordpress-search-engine-optimization-plugin-1200-sold-rave-reviews-get-more-google-traffic-try-demo.html#1
Hi Dennis.
The theme on this site is called Socrates (which you can see by the link in the ad unit on the top right and in the footer). You could also find out by using http://whatwpthemeisthat.com
I have briefly seen “1 Click SEO WP”, but haven’t tested it myself. The method it uses to automatically update your page/post could potentially save a lot of time if you have a lot of content to optimize.
Cheers
Peter
I am sure it will be a great tool, Still its hard for me to judge keyword density of my content. This tool will help me out, Thanks 🙂
Hello Peter,
Did you use a plugin to mask your aff links using javascript code?
Thanks,
Well spotted! I use a mixture of GhostURL and Pretty Link Lite for masking my affiliate links.
Cheers
Peter
Just googled GhostURL and it sounds like Shane 🙂
I used to do it manually which was pain in *somewhere,
Thank you very much Peter.
Hi Peter,
Is this article still relevant, do you think you will still recommend Easy WP SEO?
Thanks!
Hi Carl.
Good question.
Easy WP SEO was a great option in the pre-panda days. However its usefulness since has diminished.
These days I would just recommend using Yoast SEO. It’s a great plugin as it’s fast (faster than all-in-one-seo) and has similar LSI features to Easy WP SEO and the updated SEOPressor.
Cheers
Peter
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply, I’m going to use the Yoast SEO plugin, it will save me money to.
Carl